Wayne Alan Brenner's Favorites in 2013, Austin Chronicle

Brenner's portmanteau of 13 items includes 6 from locally produced Austin theatre:

 

Top 10 Creative Things I Lucked Into in 2013

Remembering the year thick with superlative works of art onstage and in galleries

By Wayne Alan Brenner, Fri., Jan. 3, 2014

Katherine Catmull (photo: Capital T Theatre)

1) Joked with my editor that the first nine slots of this list would repeat 'THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS' (Capital T Theatre). That brilliant Mickle Maher comedy, about the consequences of two William Blake-enamored professors engaging in glorious copulation on the campus lawn in view of their students, was by far the best thing I experienced in a year thick with superlative works of art. Directed by Mark Pickell, the script was embodied by three actors – Jason Phelps, Katherine Catmull, and Ken Webster, already among the best in town – working at the height of their knock-you-over abilities.

. . . .

4) FRONTERAFEST is another multipartite perennial that keeps on giving, and one of the best Short Fringe things it gave was Kyle John Schmidt's "The Blissful Orphans," featuring Curtis Luciani, Bob Jones, and friends in a fractured fairy tale that surpassed anything Rocky & Bullwinkle ever attempted.

. . .

6) Using Jason Liebrecht as a hinge to open a door between two theatre productions: Martin McDonagh's 'THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE' (Capital T Theatre), brought to Grand Guignol life with Liebrecht chewing the scenery as an Irish terrorist who's out to slaughter whoever killed his beloved pet cat Wee Thomas; and 'FIXING KING JOHN' (Rude Mechanicals), Kirk Lynn's Deadwood-esque upgrade of Shakespeare, in which that same Liebrecht played the brave, hotheaded, sometimes near-colicky, and relentlessly besieged monarch contending with a cast of (mostly doomed) characters equal to his fierce talents.

7) Speaking of stagework, can somebody raid a sports paradigm and confer MVP status on actor MOLLY KARRASCH? I mean, Jesus, Slowgirl, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Tragedy: a tragedy, Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall – the woman's got range and a half.

8) Steve Moore and 'ADAM SULTAN' (Physical Plant) gave the Austin theatre scene an intimate view of itself with this heartfelt hall of mirrors, casting community stalwart Adam Sultan in the title role as a man who spends the increasingly lonely decades of his life commemorating all his creative friends who die as the years go by.

9) 'THE HEAD' (Trouble Puppet Theatre) was the semi-autobiographical apotheosis of everything that Connor Hopkins' strange and splendid company has done before, with so many disparate parts effectively orchestrated to show how ineffectively orchestrated a human can be when desire confounds sense and recreational drugs complicate the situation we call being alive.

Read full article at the Austin Chronicle on-line. . . .

POEMS FOR PEACE, Subud International Cultural Association at Zach Theatre, September 21, 2013

POEMS FOR PEACE

for International Peace Day

Saturday, September 21, 2013, 12:30 p.m.

Zach Theatre Kleberg Stage
free admission

Austin-based Subud International Cultural Association (SICA) invites the entire Austin community — poetry groups, poetry teachers, poetry lovers, singers, dancers, artists, actors, pipers, players and friends to create and share POEMS FOR PEACE in honor of Peace Day, Saturday, September 21, 2013. 

SICA is part of a global coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with UK’s Peace One Day to organize activities celebrating peace and nonviolence around the world on Peace Day. Over 600 million people will be aware of Peace Day this year and there will be a 24 hour celebration for Peace Day 2013 at The Hague —headlined by Carlinhos Brown, Miguel Bosé, The Feeling and others from around the globe. SICA will be live-streaming the event. 

Austin’s own and former Executive Director of the Austin Creative Alliance, Latifah Taormina, spearheaded the Poems for Peace global initiative last year. Now, the celebration culminates in Austin with veteran Austin performers Robert Faires, Kathy Catmull, Steve Moore, and Barbara Chisholm among several others, sharing poems they love at a FREE event Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 12:30 pm at Zachary Scott Theatre’s Kleberg Stage (1401 West Riverside Drive, Austin, 78704). The event is free of charge to the public.

Peace One Day’s theme for this year’s Peace Day is “Who are you going to make peace with?” Taormina explains, “Maybe that begins with oneself, with forgiveness of ourselves and others, and from there we can begin to feel the peace inside we can share with others.”


Austinites are being called to action by participating in, or coordinating, a Poems for Peace event, which can be as simple as reciting poetry in one’s home. People can recite, write, sing and create poetry through flash mobs, poetry readings, parties, slams,performances, workshops, exhibits, classes, concerts, games and love-notes in honor of Peace Day. Poetry can be found even in a child’s scribbling their favorite rhyme on the sidewalk with chalk. Participants are encouraged to document and share their efforts on the Poems for Peace website (www.poems-for-peace.org) or Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PoemsForPeaceOneDay. There are also past examples of creative events from around the world, on the website.


“This is about actively sharing one’s love of peace through poetry.” says Latifah Taormina, SICA’s Board President. “Poems live in our music, our holy books and in our hearts. Poems for Peace is an invitation to connect to that place inside us all and share your favorite poems — wherever you are — on Peace Day.”


SICA is proud to be part of this global initiative for peace which gives everyone an opportunity to share good things with friends and neighbors in a powerful and positive way.


www.facebook.com/poemsForPeaceOneDay -- http://twitter.com/Poems4peace -- http://www.poems-for-peace.org

About Peace One Day Peace One Day began in 1999 as a cease fire initiative in Afghanistan to allow health workers to safely get to children to treat them on that day. In 2001 Peace One Day’s efforts were rewarded when the United Nations unanimously adopted a new resolution to declare its International Day of Peace (“Peace Day”) as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence. http://peaceoneday.org

About Peace Day – September 21st The International Day of Peace, a.k.a. “Peace Day,” was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has enthusiastically endorsed Peace One Day’s initiative and its global coalition, and encourages all people everywhere to participate in Peace Day, September 21, 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeAOxW7O9oE

About The Subud International Cultural Association (SICA) The Subud International Cultural Association (SICA) is a nonprofit organization providing programs and services to individuals and organizations working in the fields of art, culture, and creativity for the development of human values across all fields of human endeavor. SICA believes the development of individual talent is critical to building love and respect among people everywhere. SICA was begun by members of the World Subud Association in 1983. http://www.subud-sica.org

Adam Sultan by Steve Moore and Zeb L. West, Physical Plant Theare, March 28 - April 13, 2013

(poster design: Jennymarie Jemison)

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


For the committed theatergoer, this was a long-awaited premiere. The blended live-action and puppet play previewed at the 2012 Fusebox Festival. The preview tantalized audiences with its potential for taking many different directions.


The premiere at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre on March 28 satisfied our aroused curiosity with a long sequence of wise story choices. They took us through some surprising ways yet never strayed from its emotional heart. Sure, it was about death, and innovative puppetry sustained all its moods and action; at the same time the production remained light, humor-filled and entertaining. 
 A demanding ticket buyer couldn’t ask for much more.


The play follows the character of Adam Sultan, played by the artist Adam Sultan, through to the far distant future of A.D. 2052 (not quite forty years from now). 

 Aged and infirm, Sultan sees and feels the loss of his artist friends all around him. Seemingly despairing, he collects mementos of their lives and seals those objects into glass jars. His bookshelf fills with the jars. Then one day a half-scale doppelganger puppet enters his apartment, drinks heavily and passes out. Sultan doesn’t know what to make of it; he never does know what to make of it. What’s sure is only that from this point forward puppets carry equal weight with human actors in conveying the story and its meanings.

(photo: Physical Plant Theatre)

The Physical Plant team of Steve Moore and Zeb L. West wrote and crafted the show. In addition to makiing unerring choices in a mature story revolving around death, they incorporated advanced concepts of new puppetry that took Adam Sultan to the edge of theatre and puppetry. 

Completely black-garbed puppeteers were visible onstage. In conventional theatre, anyone wearing black is a technician and therefore invisible in the sense of operating the play and not figuring in the scripted action; technicians are merely making it happen.


The Adam Sultan puppeteers pushed this envelope or bent this frame in several ways. First and most fundamentally, the puppeteers manipulated and changed the human actors throughout the play; they did so subtly and tellingly when they reshaped the postures and stances of the living to reflect advancing age, as for example in the touching moment when they placed wedding rings on the fingers of the lead characters. In addition, the puppeteers removed their black headgear to speak narrative voice-overs at a microphone stand at stage left. With this, the audience no longer held the puppeteers comfortably framed in invisibility as helpers for the story. Attention, audience: they might do other things, so be ready.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

ADAM SULTAN, Physical Plant Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, March 28 - April 13, 2013

Physical Plant Theater

presents

Adam Sultan

March 28-April 13, 2013; shows at 8:00 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays.
(Two additional shows as part of the Fusebox Festival: April 18 and April 19 at 7pm.)
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722 (click for map)

Tickets: $12-$25 at http://www.physicalplant.org/adamsultan/ or at the door
LENGTH: 90 minutes

Created for adults, the play is appropriate for ages 15 and up
Fast forward 40 years and Austin’s bon vivant Adam Sultan copes with the loss of his friends and his community by collecting objects to remember them by. In this newdrama, Physical Plant considers the ways that death so often points eagerly at life. Arrive early to enjoy the lobby installation of mementos from the theater community. From the creators of the award-winning shows Nightswim, The Kindermann Depiction, and Not Clown.

Adam Sultan is real and lives in Austin. Great guy. Musician, composer, dancer, storyteller, actor, and teacher. The play is as a kind of speculative biography of Adam, as we imagine his life about forty years in the future. By then, Adam is in his eighties, many of his dearest friends have died, including his wife, and he’s contending with his loss by collecting mementos of the dead. Sometimes melancholy, often hilariously poignant, Adam Sultan asks how we continue to be influenced, moved, and changed by those we’ve loved and lost.

As part of the project, we’ve collected over 400 mementos from members of the theater and performance community. We’ll have those on display in the lobby along with audio of the people describing the significance of their objects.


Physical Plant Theater is the recipient of numerous B. Iden Payne Awards, Austin Critics Table Awards, and David Mark Cohen Playwriting Awards. We are dedicated to making work that is created entirely in Austin, often about Austin, and always deeply connected to this place and this community. Physical Plant is supported by the Creative Fund and by individual donors.
Salvage Vanguard Theater is a hub for Austin artists, audiences, and arts organizations. SVT creates and presents transformative, high-quality artistic experiences that fosterexperimentation and conversation.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Kickstarter Appeal from Steve Moore for 'Adam Sultan,' Celebrating Austin's Theatre Community, Mortality and This Moment in Time

 



How would you as an Austin theatre artist want to be remembered decades from now? Steve Moore explains the rationale for his play Adam Sultan, scheduled to open at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre at the end of March and asks for your support.

Adam Sultan is a real person here in Austin - a composer, performer, teacher, friend. At the moment, he is still alive.

You can select your own memento and lend it to Steve and the Physical Plant Theatre Company, as many of us already have. You can also donate toward the $4900 the company needs to produce the show. Click HERE or on either Kickstarter logo for further information and to pledge.

 

Adam Sultan is a play slated to open in Austin on March 28th - just about two months from now.
The play centers around a real person in the world named Adam Sultan. Great guy. Lives here in Austin. He's a musician, composer, dancer, storyteller, actor, and teacher.

We imagine Adam's life about forty years in the future. It's the year 2052, and Adam is in his eighties. Many of his dearest friends have died, including his wife -- and much has changed. Including Adam. Over the years he's gone from happy and adventurous to cranky and withdrawn, in large part because the community he was once a part of has disintegrated around him. That's where we begin.

One day, seemingly at random, an exact puppet version of Adam arrives at his apartment. It can't see Adam and can't hear him, but it is definitely alive. It walks, eats, drinks, and sleeps. And it's living some version of Adam's own life....


Go to the Kickstarter page for more information. . . .

Upcoming: Agnes and Alfred, Physical Plant Theatre at the Off-Center, September 28 - October 27

Agnes and Alfred

September 28th-October 27th, 2012; shows at 8:00 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays
Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, Austin, TX 78702.
http://www.rudemechs.com/off_center/index.htm

$18 at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/259317 or at the door

First thrown together at a fire evacuation shelter, Agnes and Alfred hold and release each other for the next seventeen years — driven onward by jokes, joy, and recklessness.

As an Oregon forest fire burns up their homes and everything they own, Agnes and Alfred meet at an evacuation shelter and start their lives over again, together. They are too smart and too brave for their own good. Too roughed up already. Funny at the wrong times. Too right for each other. Too tender and too moody. Over the course of five scenes and seventeen years, they burn each other down to the bare embers.

Agnes and Alfred is a new play by Physical Plant Artistic Director Steve Moore. It is directed by Carlos Treviño and features Thomas Graves, Hannah Kenah, and Katie Van Winkle.

The show is not recommended for children under 17.

Physical Plant Theater is a nonprofit theater company located in Austin, Texas and committed to creating original, unconventional stage plays. The company is the recipient of numerous B. Iden Payne and Austin Critics’ Table awards. Physical Plant is supported by corporate, foundational, and individual donors.

Steve Moore co-founded Physical Plant Theater in 1994 and has since written or had a hand in writing thirteen of its eighteen shows. He is a two-time recipient of the David Mark Cohen New Play Award, and holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. In 2012, his showBottled-in-Bond co-created with Zeb L. West was named “Best Theatrical Event” by the Austin Critics’ Table.

Carlos Treviño is a theater director, playwright, screenwriter, and an artistic associate of Physical Plant Theater and Rubber Repertory. Segments of his film anthology "Fourplay" have screened at Cannes and Sundance film festivals; the entire film premiered at Outfest in July.
Agnes and Alfred tickets available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/259317

(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)